WATER
ROTTER
Testing building products and systems for water and moisture penetration

Water vapour causes mould and rot in buildings – it can lead to
asthma, allergies and sick building syndrome. It can cause sturdy buildings
to crumble into the ground.

Now a simple permeability testing
procedure for building products, paints and vapour barriers is available
- from permeability specialists Versaperm

The company offers a technical
service to the building industry that can measure the vapour transmission
rate (permeability) of a wide range of products, barriers, treatments
and coatings. The service is particularly important with the growth in
both “breathing building” constructions and historical building
renovations - where the wrong vapour barriers can cause a building to
rot away in just a few years.

Management of water vapour
in the built environment is a complex process that, in an ideal world,
involves prevention rather than cure. By analysing the permeability of
components and structures, optimised solutions can be produced.

Versaperm has substantial experience
in the area and is always interested in the challenge of measuring the
leakage rates of new designs. In some places you need effective vapour
barriers, in others moisture must be allowed to flow through the fabric
of the building.

The Versaperm service is unusual
in that it can measure very thick samples for permeability. Using the
standard flat sample chamber, the company can measure samples up to 50mm
thick, which is sufficient for most laminates, timber, felts, films and
other materials used in the building industry.

However, the company also has
a number of non-standard chamber configurations for measuring almost any
thickness of building material. It also has specialist equipment for measuring
adhesives, mastics and other sealing materials for leakage rates.

The company uses its own-developed
MVTR (Moisture Vapour Transmission) equipment, which can produce accurate
and reliable results to better than one part per million – sometimes
in the parts per hundreds of million range. With some materials these
results can be achieved in as little as 30 minutes, but even with hard
to measure foils, results can normally be turned around in a day. Sensitivities
are in the range 0.05 – 3200gm/m2/day.